It’s the cinematic equivalent of a still-life as this film moves about as slow as molasses and only amplifies the glacial pace with long shots and even longer takes. While such a technique might infuriate a viewer if it were employed on a different subject matter, those willing to stick with the movie to the end should ultimately admire the tightly controlled and delicately constructed film. At times, it can be fairly difficult to watch … but how hunky-dory do you want movies about death to be? How can you even begin to comprehend the ennui of watching someone slowly lose their grip on life when you are treated to watch from a coolly removed distance?

What I found to be particularly interesting about the film was how Haneke shoots the film in such a straightforward and unambiguous fashion, an apparent change from the intricate machinery behind his puzzlers “Caché” and “The White Ribbon.” In a way, such a style wouldn’t make sense for “Amour,” but I do think it serves another purpose as well. It makes the audience complacent and allows Haneke to really put an emphatic exclamation point on the end of a cinematic sentence that doesn’t seem to require such an emphatic punctuation.

The performances from French veterans Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant as the ailing wife and her husband are impressive in their control and their naturalism, as is Haneke muse Isabelle Huppert as their grief-stricken daughter. But “Amour” is definitely a Haneke showcase above all, a movie that may seem familiar at first but inextricably bears his stamp. B / 

“Lawless,” John Hillcoat’s drama set in Prohibition-era Virginia countryside, fills such a groove. It does not quite have the overall package to compete for Oscar gold, but it’s hardly a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination. It has flaws, particularly in the insipid first act weighted down by exposition; however, when the film kicks into high gear, it provides a riveting ride.

While I haven’t been a big fan of Shia LaBeouf since “Even Stevens,” which I can now continue to argue is his most accomplished work to date, “Lawless” gets bolstered by a number of supporting performances that should garner the actors some much overdue recognition. Surprisingly, one of these tour de forces is not given by Jessica Chastain, cinema’s new “it girl.”  She’s fine, don’t get me wrong, but Chastain and Mia Wasikowska seem only relevant to the film for marketing purposes, token females to help reach another quadrant.

No, the superb acting comes from Tom Hardy as the immortal Forrest Bondurant, a braggadocios moonshiner who seems to have spawned the myth about himself. Hardy so perfectly endows his character with a sheen of self-righteousness without ever seeming haughty or unsympathetic. When he knocks out foes with brass knuckles, you can hear an audible “yes!” muttered under everyone’s breath. His part may command less screen time than LaBeouf as his brother Danny, but Hardy feels like the protagonist and the leading man all the way through.

It also helps that the Bondurants have a strong adversary in Charlie Rakes, a well-groomed city cop with a cringe-worthy butt part and no eyebrows played masterfully by Guy Pearce. It’s not often I root so vehemently against a villain, but thanks to Pearce, we see the blackness of his heart and the coldness of his soul lain bare across the screen.  As he attempts to foil the bootlegging of the Bondurants in what was then known as “the wettest county in the world,” screenwriter Nick Cave and Pearce just keep hitting every note perfectly on pitch with Rakes.  It may be too soon to scream Academy Award, but at the very least, this should remind people that Guy Pearce should be moving out of Gary Oldman-esque character actor purgatory.

Aside from Hardy and Pearce, “Lawless” is fun and entertaining but little more. Hillcoat does little innovative with the camera or creative with the genre, and Cave’s script is conventional but rarely tedious. Nonetheless, there’s nothing wrong that running what you know works from the playbook, but it does put an upper limit on a film’s capability to have an enduring place in any cinematic canon.  B / 

Getting down to the core of our humanity (or the bone, if you will) is a difficult and unsavory task, but you may hardly notice just how rough it can be until Jacques Audiard has released you from his grasp when the credits of “Rust and Bone” roll.  His cinematic paean to the resilience of the human spirit takes two characters down to their most starkly naked vulnerability, putting them through an emotional and physical gauntlet that tries them as well as the audience.  The end of the tunnel may not be brightly lit or accompanied by tremendous fanfare, but it reinvigorates and revitalizes in a way that only a truly great movie can.

With two phenomenal actors, Matthias Schoenaerts, on the way up after last year’s Oscar-nominated “Bullhead,” and Marion Cotillard, who continues to prove movie after movie that “La Vie En Rose” was no fluke, “Rust and Bone” aims for painful areas of the psyche.  Failure, loss, disappointment, desperation, and adversity are all sores opened by the movie, and it continues to stick a finger in them when it would be far less painful to just think about them being there.  Yet it is precisely this wrenching of the soul that gives the film power and emphasis.  In a cinematic climate where misfortune has evolved from beyond a niche and is moving towards an entire genre in and of itself, it takes a lot for a movie to distinguish itself from the pack.

And believe me, from now on when I think of films about the mettle it takes to overcome immense tribulations, “Rust and Bone” will shoot to the front of my mind.  And that’s not just because Marion Cotillard is proudly sporting two limbs instead of four for the majority of the film.  Audiard, who also co-wrote the film, finds a natural way to intertwine two disparate tales of suffering into a satisfying and believable romance without hokey stunts or sensationalism.

Her Stephanie is a former whale trainer at the French equivalent of SeaWorld turned Cannes penthouse-dweller after a tragic accident in the water.  His Alain is a well-meaning but deadbeat dad as well as street fighter for cash on the side just to get by.  They meet at the beginning of the film when Alain kicks Stephanie out of the bar after she starts a fight; while it’s a strange connection, apparently it was enough for her to call him when she gets lonely in her insurance claim-purchased apartment.

Sure, the precipitating event may be a little bit of a stretch, but what ensues as they build an incredible rapport to shelter each other from pain makes up for the lack of believability of their inception.  Cotillard and Schoenaerts don’t sport a typical romantic chemistry, but they feel all the more real and human because of it.  Both meet the emotional demands of the script, exposing themselves both spiritually and physically to each other and to the audience.  (Translation from serious movie critic pose: they are naked a lot, sometimes maybe even a little gratuitously.)  Together with their bold helmer Audiard, they boldly go where few will go and bring us out in a hardly glorious but nevertheless moving affirmation of the ability of humans to be courageous and to change.  B+ /

Cannes Film Festival

Wes Anderson made a name for himself on clean, quirky visual style, and “Moonrise Kingdom” forges a further name for the director on that basis. It’s a Wes Anderson movie for people that love Wes Anderson movies, and for everyone else … yeah, there’s a different movie for you out there somewhere. If his insistence on the rule of thirds, smooth horizontal tracking shots, and manipulation of the mise-en-scene frustrated you in “The Royal Tenenbaums” or “The Darjeeling Limited,” then this movie, which is Anderson stylistically to a T, will only frustrate you more.

I, like many, enjoy the quirkiness of Anderson’s idiosyncratic eye, so watching “Moonrise Kingdom” felt like devouring sugar for an hour and a half. The film almost feels like the director is making a tribute to his own technique as it hits the viewer with a sledgehammer with its flair within the frame. But that sledgehammer is more like a blow-up hammer you get at a carnival, one that whacks you in a fun and enjoyable way (provide you don’t mind the bump on your head). He does extreme close-ups on written notes, takes it to Kubrickian lengths with his dolly shots, and sports costumes and sets that look both of their time and out of this world. I doubt there is anyone that couldn’t tell you what a Wes Anderson movie is after watching his latest feature.

But while aesthetics may have defined Anderson to the masses, his films also boast a quiet strength that serve a perfect compliment to his stylistic bravura: their bizarre, irrational characters full of humanity in spite of their seemingly out-of-whack brain chemistry. Indeed, “The Royal Tenenbaums” would be nothing without its hilarious family ensemble of uniquely defined individuals … heck, even “Fantastic Mr. Fox” was driven by its stop-motion characters. While the personalities that fill the screen “Moonrise Kingdom” surely fit the Anderson mold, they feel more like underdeveloped archetypes than true narrative-drivers worth emotionally investing in.

The story of Sam and Suzy, twelve-year-old social pariahs who run away to live in freshly pubescent passion in the woods, and the idiotic adults trying to track them down is most definitely entertaining to watch. Even where Anderson and Roman Coppola’s script plots thinly, the acting skill picks up the slack, particularly Bruce Willis as a moronic cop and Edward Norton as pea-brained scout master. Yet even with lively portrayals, the cast of “Moonrise Kingdom” never quite breathes nearly enough life into their characters, and they needed that gust to hit the mark.

Granted, no one would mistake Wes Anderson for a maudlin or emotional director, but the kind of story he tells here may almost require something other than his normal detachment. His tale of love never excites or sparks at the heights of his aesthetics. The originality at least keeps it engaging and interesting, but anyone who knows Anderson will be fully cognizant of the reality that “Moonrise Kingdom” lacks the wholesome blends of style and substance that defines his beloved films.

Even though Anderson is probably most responsible for the film’s flaws, he is also clearly responsible for the film’s many successes. The vast majority of my laughs came not from a line in the screenplay or an actor’s facial expression. Rather, the jovial hilarity of “Moonrise Kingdom” comes from the peculiarities of Anderson’s manipulation of the image. It’s rare when I can say that seeing the way Bill Murray is photographed is funnier than Bill Murray himself, but it happened here, it happened with the other actors, and it happened often. B /

War is hell.  Then the soldier comes home and fights a war of readjustment, making home a separate kind of hell thanks to the transitive property.  ”Hell and Back Again” chronicles both battlegrounds for an American soldier, Sergeant Nathan Harris, serving in Afghanistan.  It has some poignant moments, particularly a large funeral for several fallen soldiers, but Danfung Dennis’ documentary overall dwells in the been there, done that territory for the majority of its 90 minute runtime.

And that’s a real shame because our soldiers deserve better than a humdrum movie that does not fully communicate just how much bravery it requires to serve in Afghanistan and just how much perseverance is required to live afterwards.  Harris has it particularly rough, suffering a life-threatening injury from a Taliban bullet in the leg.  He has his wife, Ashley, back at home in North Carolina to help sustain him emotionally through the physical therapy, but everything still takes a humongous and taxing toll.  It’s painful, sure, but dread should be creeping up our spine watching Harris.  The empathy Dennis manages to generate is all too easily shrugged off.

“Hell and Back Again” is a skilled work, though, interlacing Harris’ recovery with battle scenes of the same visceral intensity as “Restrepo.”  At times, they don’t always mesh quite as seamlessly as Dennis intended, but war isn’t neat.  It’s messy; it’s dirty; it’s the ultimate gauntlet.  While it’s nice to observe that personal hell, documentaries should really be putting us in hell alongside him, ultimately emerging thankful for his sacrifice and grateful for our own freedoms.  For whatever reason, Dennis’ film is too removed to really sear or stir.  C+ / 

If Washington can’t overhaul border security for the safety of our nation, they should at least pass some legislation that will discourage Hollywood from making me sit through another self-righteous movie about illegal immigrants like “A Better Life.”  It’s the same problem I had with “Like Crazy” – how are we supposed to feel sorry for people who have willfully broken the law and then complain when the world isn’t working for them?  There are plenty of channels for legal immigration into the United States, and merely crossing over the border does not entitle anyone to all the benefits of being an American.

Full disclosure, I am from Texas and do have strong views on the issue.  Nonetheless, director Chris Weitz does little to turn the odds in his favor by conveying the story with a total lack of vehemence, urgency, or feeling.  It’s a frigid, understated tale of a harsh world for a man, Carlos Galindo (Demian Bichir) just trying to squeak out a living for his son Luis (Jose Julian) and squeak by the police.

Bichir is fine, but the Oscar nomination was surely more of a political statement than an artistic statement.  He conveys Carlos’ pain in watching his business collapse under the weight of Murphy’s Law as well as the concern for Luis to make something more out of his life than selling drugs.  Yet what could have been a tour de force in an appeal to pathos just feels rather lukewarm.  It’s a fairly interesting watch, but ultimately “A Better Life” could have been a better movie.  B- / 

“Almost Famous” sure was a long time ago for Cameron Crowe, who has truly surrendered to hokey cornography with “We Bought a Zoo.”  Gone is the man who rocked our socks off with an autobiographical tale of coming of age and rock and roll, replaced with the spirit of “The Blind Side?”  Crowe deserves better than a straight shot for the tear ducts.  We deserve better, too.

He throws just about every banality in the book at us – the dad (Matt Damon) trying to be a good parent, the kids trying to thwart his every good intention, the ridiculous decision made on blind faith that just so happens to work while teaching them all valuable life lessons … only at the movies!  Especially when that crazy idea is purchasing, renovating, maintaining a zoo.  Oh, and there’s a snarky inspector played by John Michael Higgins who gets far too much screen time and threatens to destroy all their hard work.  Around his second minute on screen, you’ll want Scarlett Johansson to stop playing Kelly Foster the love interest and resume her role as the Black Widow from “Iron Man 2.”

The question here isn’t, will they succeed?  Will Damon’s Ben Mee make the zoo and his family function again?  Watch a trailer, look at a poster, read the genre on IMDb, and you’ll find out the answer to that.  The real question is why Cameron Crowe would sell his soul for “We Bought a Zoo.”  Look at his past movies and it’s clear that the man has a knack for narrative; this just plays on minimal satisfaction to the lowest common denominator at all times.  If he just wanted to make a family movie where the animals don’t talk, that wouldn’t bother me … but it’s clear that he needed to reach a little deeper into his script pile.  C+ / 

2011 will likely go down in the comedy record books as a year where raunch ruled the roost.  Yet it is possible that “Rio,” a G-rated animated comedy from BlueSky, packed the most laughs of them all (save perhaps “Bridesmaids“).  Without ever uttering a curse word or resorting to the profane, the animals take the day in a wholly unexpected and delightful way.

While it may not be able to boast the complex emotions or deep storyline of a Pixar film, “Rio” is just like a beach ball, meant for fun and little else.  And I’m totally fine with that.  Its clean, innocent humor charms anyone willing to resume the persona of a child.

The movie boasts some hilarious characters thanks to very clever voice casting.  Neurotic Jesse Eisenberg plays opposite the sassy Anne Hathaway as a macaw returning to the Brazilian wild after years living in a Minnesota bookstore.  It’s a journey done many times before, but when you take it alongside Tracy Morgan as a drooling bulldog, it can still be fun.  Add in a few toe-tapping musical numbers that are not necessarily well incorporated (but still enjoyable nonetheless) and a setting against the backdrop of the Brazilian Carnaval, and you just might want to book your ticket to Rio for 2016.  Or maybe just watch it repeatedly on TV.  A- / 

With “Super Size Me,” Morgan Spurlock set out to change the way we consume fast food.  For the most part, it worked.  (A society doesn’t just naturally all decide they want fruit slices instead of fries with that burger, do they?)  With “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” Spurlock set out to change the way we consume movies – and that might be an even bigger challenge.

Did it work?

If you want to judge in box office dollars, no.  There was no consumer rights revolution sparked by this movie.  But while it didn’t affect the masses, those who take the time to watch Spurlock’s documentary will find the way they look at the movies to be totally different.  It’s as if studios are happy for us to watch their products through a foggy lens, and “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” is a wipe that allows us to see them more clearly for what they are: advertisements for all your favorite corporations!

Now that you TiVo through their million-dollar commercials, they have to find some way to reach you!  (After all, you just ignore their sidebar ads on Facebook and phony “top results” on Google.)  Sure enough, most products you see in movies have been paid to appear there.  Tony Stark wasn’t written into “Iron Man” being a Dr. Pepper drinker, but that company sure will pay for Jon Favreau to read between the lines and put a Dr. Pepper can in his hand throughout the movie.

And how does Spurlock make this exposé of new advertising?  Through advertising and product placement.  In other words, prepare yourself for what might be the most meta movie … ever.  It’s self-aware to such extremes that it makes your head hurt.  But I’d rather finish a movie feeling educated and confused than dumber and satisfied.  Please, for heaven’s sake, put down the Big Mac (metaphorically speaking, this would be a movie like “Captain America“) and put some POM Wonderful (continuing the metaphor, this would be “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold”) into your body.  It’s time that you consumed a movie that’s healthy and aims for nothing less than changing your views.  A- / 

Mark Hogancamp, the film’s subject, sees his life turned upside down by a debilitating attack by assailants outside a bar.  After emerging from a coma, he decides to dedicate his life to giving it to others.  And by others, I mean dolls.

Yes, Mark decides to build a 1/6 replica World War II-era town called Marwencol, which he designs and populates himself.  He even acts as God and narrates their lives, giving them drama, conflict, and meaning.  Take out the brain injury at the beginning, and you would be laughing your head off.

But that’s not what happens, and Malmberg makes sure that you take Mark very seriously.  His in-depth character study that really takes the time and care to show just how passionately Mark feels about the town of Marwencol.  For he from whom life was taken, this is life, and Malmberg will have us respect that.

Obviously, word gets out about Marwencol (otherwise we wouldn’t have the movie “Marwencol”), and art collectors flock to get in on the picee of the action.  Then, things start to get interesting.  Is it OK to masquerade someone’s personal therapy as art, opening it up to mockery and criticism?  Who gets to call it art, anyways?  The drama is real, and the stakes are high – Marwencol was Mark’s way of coping with the harsh realities of his existence.

Interested yet?  Mull over these issues, and many more, with popcorn and “Marwencol.”  It would make for an unconventional, but decidedly meaningful, movie night.